the nightstand. He did the same in the bathroom, scrubbing out the shower and the toilet, and cleaning the sink and mirrors.
When he was finished he took the garbage downstairs and stuffed it in one of the cans in the back alley.
Back in the apartment he sat by the window again and had another cigarette and glass of wine, cleansing his mind, as he had his apartment, of her. In effect she was a prostitute. Her pimp was the French Secret Service, and her John was McGarvey. He’d known that from the start. But as with Marta Fredricks, his watchdog in Switzerland a few years ago, he’d come to have a genuine feeling for Jacqueline despite himself. A feeling, he told himself firmly, that could go nowhere.
Marta had lost her life chasing after him. He was glad now to be rid of Jacqueline, at least in mat respect. She would be a lot safer away from him.
Nobody was coming tonight, he decided finally. They weren’t going to arrest him, they were simply going to watch him.
He went in the bathroom and urinated. When he was done he got up on the edge of the tub and carefully lifted the mechanism and false bottom out of the overhead gravity tank, causing the toilet to flush. He pulled out a flat, plastic-wrapped package from inside, and as the last of the water ran out of the tank, replaced the mechanism so that the tank would refill normally.
He opened the package on the bed and took out his Walther PPK, two spare magazines of ammunition, a silencer disguised to look like a small flashlight, ten thousand dollars cash in American dollars, British pounds and Swiss francs, a spare set of identity papers, a small plastic squeeze bottle containing hair coloring, and a set of light blue-contact lenses.
These last he took back into the bathroom, where he cut his hair short with his electric razor, careful to rinse all the hair down the sink, then colored it a light gray. He put in the contact lenses, and when he was finished he looked like a somewhat older man, which matched the photographs in his false papers.
He took a long, hot shower, made certain that the bathroom was clean, then got dressed in a nondescript pair of slacks, turtleneck and leather jacket. He stuffed the plastic package and half-full hair coloring bottle, his laptop computer and a few extra items of clothing into an overnight bag which he set by the front door. He quickly checked the apartment one last time to make sure everything was shut off, then let himself out, silently closing and locking the door behind him.
He took the stairs two at a time to the top floor, where from a window at the end of the corridor he studied the shadows in the alley.
Five minutes later, certain that no one was down there, he climbed out onto the fire escape, and scrambled down to the alley and headed away, not at all sure when or if he’d ever be back.
The Hotel Trois Freres was a half-block off the Rue Vaugirad near the Gare Montparnasse. It was small, but clean, and catered mostly to European travelers on a budget who wanted peace and quiet in the middle of Paris for a reasonable price. The back rooms looked down on a pleasant terrace with a small fountain that ran all night. In the morning the hotel served a continental breakfast next door at a patisserie. It served wine in the evening from six until seven. Everyone, staff and guests, was polite but reserved. Europeans were not as a rule as snoopy as Americans.
McGarvey checked in under the name Pierre Allain, a political writer from Spa, Belgium, with the spare passport and credit cards he kept in reserve.
A lot depended on Jacqueline, her control officer and Colonel Galan. Galan had asked for help from the CIA. But when Ryan started to push there was no telling how the French would react. They wanted information, but they might resent interference. The French were sometimes touchy on the subject. Officially the CIA did not maintain a presence in France. It was a fiction that every body could live with. Unless somebody started to get too aggressive.
The SVR, which was the foreign intelligence gathering arm of the new Russian secret service, also maintained a station here. McGarvey was not a hundred percent convinced that Yemlin had been able to mask his true purpose for coming to France. So it was possible that the Russians would be looking for him as well.
Before he went to bed for a troubled night of sleep, he disassembled his gun, wiped it down, then reassembled and loaded it.
For better or worse, he was back in the field, no longer a civilian. Anyone could be gunning for him.
In the morning over breakfast he scoured Le Figaro for any mention that the police were looking for him, then walked a dozen blocks over to the Boulevard St. Michel on the east side of the Jardin du Luxembourg where he called his apartment from a pay phone. When his answering machine kicked in, he entered the code to retrieve any messages. There were none. Next he entered a three digit code which monitored noises in the apartment for thirty seconds. The place was silent. They weren’t coming after him yet. But they would be if for no other reason than to ask him some questions.
He spent the next few hours before lunch shopping at the big department store, BHV, across from the Hotel de Ville, where he bought a sport coat, a couple of shirts, a couple of pairs of slacks, and a few other items.
Dropping his purchases back at his hotel, he had a light lunch at a sidewalk cafe, then went over to the Bon Marche, the left bank’s only department store, where he’ picked up a sturdy leather suitcase. He paid for his clothing with the Allain credit card, but paid cash for the suitcase. A visitor from Belgium might buy a sport coat and slacks in Paris, but it was less likely that he would buy a suitcase. It would be presumed he came with one.
Before he went back to his hotel, he called his apartment again. Jacqueline was on his answering machine.
“Don’t hang up, Kirk. I want to talk to you. Hit five six and your call will be rolled over to me—”
McGarvey hung up. He’d made the opening move, and they were countering. The next few days would see how serious they were.
He went back to the hotel, where the desk clerk, a pleasant looking woman in her early forties, flashed him a smile.
“Monsieur Allain, it is rare to see a man who enjoys shopping as much as you do.”
The woman was fluting with him, he decided. “Not really, Madame, it is necessary. For the children, you know. And for my wife. They expect me to send them something from Paris.”
She lowered her eyes. “Do you travel much, then?”
“Too much. I miss them.”
The woman’s eyes went to his left hand, and she smiled. He wore no ring. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”
“And you, Madame,” McGarvey said, and he went up to his room on the third floor where he laid the package containing the suitcase on the bed.
It was unlikely that the SDECE would get onto his Allain identity very quickly. Though every hotel registration card was collected by the police each night, there simply were too many visitors to Paris for all the cards to be thoroughly checked. As a safeguard, however, he could seduce the desk clerk, and have her include a registration card in the next bundle that showed he’d checked out.
Something to be considered, he thought. But it wasn’t necessary just yet.
He unwrapped the suitcase, took all the tags off the new clothes, men packed them in the suitcase, which he rewrapped and addressed to Madame Suzanne Allain in Spa. He took the package downstairs and laid it on the desk so the woman could see the address.
“Could you tell me where the nearest post office is,” McGarvey asked.
“We could take care of it for you.”
“It’s better if I do it myself. It has to be insured.”
“Of course,” the woman said, and she gave him directions to a post office a half-dozen blocks away.
McGarvey walked a few blocks from the hotel, unwrapped the suitcase and discarded the packing paper in a trash container, after first marking out the address. Then he took a cab to an Avis agency near the Gare de Lyon where he rented a mid-sized Renault for two weeks, paying extra for international insurance. He placed the suitcase in the trunk, and drove back to a car park that was attended twenty-four hours per day a few blocks from his hotel. He paid Avis with the Allain credit card, and paid cash for the car park.
Before he returned to his hotel he telephoned his apartment again, and got the same message from Jacque
